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Gary, I think Terminal 2 is a sideshow now. DHB drew up the plans for it when freight was experiencing an exponential increase and they forecast that the Eastern Docks would run out of capacity in years to come. That prospect has receded into the distant future with the global recession. Ever larger ferries have also helped to postpone the necessity as the main constraint cited was the number of vessels able to access the swinging area off the ends of the berths in the Eastern Docks in any given time.
The cruise side is not relevant as it was unaltered by the T2 proposals and the three berths on the Admiralty Pier are more than sufficient.
Privatisation is a separate issue. DHB originally said they would fund T2 from their own resources. They then said it had got more expensive and they needed funds from external sources. The government told them they could not raise external funds as a Trust Port. The government than changed the rules and invited Trust Ports to submit plans for privatisation, which would enable the Port of Dover to source external funds for the T2 project.
DHB then pressed ahead with plans for privatisation. It dispensed with a considerable part of its workforce and forced the shipping companies to make their own arrangements against their wishes. It increased the berthing fees to create a £60m first installment to put towards T2. It then said that, instead of using it for T2 as promised, it was going to use half of this money to pay off the pension deficit and the other half to tart up the port, both investments being to make the port more attractive to prospective purchasers.
DHB then came out with the bombshell that there would be no requirement for any new owner to proceed with the plans for T2, despite having extracted these sums from the port users on that basis. They then said that they were going to put up berthing fees for years to come in order to proceed with T2 whatever happened.
The whole thing has therefore come full circle, from privatisation being needed for port expansion to privatisation being a goal in itself. The last government appeared to be in favour of privatisation, with the prospective Conservative MP for Dover declaring himself adamantly against at, and the prospective Conservative government saying that they had not made up their mind and would carry out a review if they came to power.
Now that we have a Conservative LibDem alliance government, I am not aware of the results of any review as yet and the new MP appears to have changed his tune and come up with his own plan for the privatisation that he declared himself adamantly opposed to. It would appear that privatisation is a foregone conclusion and that it is only the manner in which it will be carried out that is in question. BarryW referred to a fire sale of the port by the Labour government and it would seem likely that the new government will proceed along the same lines, probably citing the desperate state of the nations finances as a result of the previous incumbents.
